breaking news on r.t. this hour cyprus rejects a saver's tax demanded by the e.u. as a precondition to a bailout crowd surrounded the parliament building as m.p.'s voted with many cypriots enraged at potentially having to. part with a substantial amount of the savings of ten percent to go towards supporting the country's banks smaller much just ahead. also chemical weapons have reportedly been used in a rocket attack that killed twenty six people in northern syria with both the opposition and the government blaming each other for the itself. the un expresses concern over the ongoing hunger striking when talum obeyed despite authorities efforts to play down the protests. and the series of bomb attacks tear through baghdad killing dozens and injuring hundreds as a rock struggles to get back on its think on the tenth anniversary of the u.s. led invasion.

life rotty h.q. in moscow eleven pm it's kevin owen here the breaking news that we've been bringing you in the last hour the cypriot parliament in the last hour has rejected that savers tax to payroll banks demanded by the european union as a precondition to the future bailout there the proposed levy caused outrage in the mediterranean island over the last couple of days with cypriots starting to lose up to ten percent of their life savings. reports now from the square right in front of the parliament to nicosia. right in front of the cypriot parliament to the parliamentarians just stepping out here and as far as we know they had rejected the one time bank deposit tax that was imposed by the e.u. find us ministers of the i.m.f. over the weekend now according to the a parliamentarian i spoke with there were thirty six nos nineteen abstained abstentions and zero yes s.

and therefore you can see that to really the opposition in the country to what is being required of them to get that ten billion euro bailout is very very strong emotions running high here on the street behind me you can see to my left and to my right there are people with banners and chanting emotions running high there show them showing in vero opposition to this is one time back to pass the tax on again the people who are saying that the euro zone is using them as a guinea pig is and they're experimenting on the country essentially because a red line has been crossed by the fact that a suggestion has been made that it is possible to dip into the savings of citizens in order to bail out their banks almost far cyprus is concerned their banks are still in trouble so the parliamentarians have told me that after this vote tonight they will have to sit down with the president of the republic and give their suggestions on how to move forward and i did speak with some of them earlier asking for their suggestions and they say that they're looking at ways to come up with a solution for cyprus that does not involve the troika there's

a lot of anger really against the troika against the euro zone countries and germany in particular and what they see as their country having been cornered into a position where they had no choice but to accept but clearly they rejected and what was imposed to them by brussels and therefore the ten billion euro bailout we've been talking about it is actually not there anymore because a precondition was this has to be this has to be passed so technically the banks will be very very much in trouble and two of the state's largest banks may have to be to be going bankrupt again they have to talk about proposals on how to move this forward if they do agree on a proposal tonight perhaps there is a solution that they can come forward with but as far as this deal is concerned everybody here tells me the parliamentarians are saying it is did. was quote united kingdom independence party i mean pretty bit earlier nigel farage he says the tax if it had passed will be nothing short of. cyprus is now the fifth country out of the seventeen that's needed to be bailed out and that is why the germans extracted

the terms that they did but i must say even in my diaries predictions in this parliament over the years about the way the e.u. bosses were behaving never did i think that they would in a completely unprecedented manner resort to stealing money from people's bank accounts and they know that once one country goes the whole deck of cards will come tumbling down and countries like germany will realize absolutely vast losses possibly as much as one trillion euros so so they are prepared now to do anything literally anything to try to keep the euro afloat and that is why they've now resorted as i say to what can only be described as theft and now they've done it in one country they're quite capable of doing it in italy spain portugal or anywhere else and the message that sends to people who've got savings in banks in those countries certainly if i was there is get your money out don't invest in the euro

zone do not invest anywhere in the euro zone you've got to be mad to do so because it's now run by people who don't respect democracy they are propping up a euro zone which in the end is going to collapse in disastrous failure are they are prepared to do anything to do so i think that this decision this german dominated and led decision is the worst decision we've seen so far in this whole eurozone crisis. rocket attack on a town outside aleppo in syria's north left dozens dead including sixty government soldiers details of what actually happened on the ground a thin but there are reports that chemical weapons could have been used there now both the syrian government of the opposition are accusing each other. within the country recently she joined me a bit earlier in the studio. as is often the case over the last ten years with a surprise in syria h. side is accusing the other one and these accusations sound quite similar we're hearing from syria's news agency national news agency rab have fired

a missile containing chemical agents in the country's north not far from syria's biggest city aleppo a scene of devastation violence over the last year and that the attack has killed dozens of people and this is almost a direct aim of what we're hearing from a u.k. based opposition group syrian observatory for human rights the only difference is beyond me is behind this attack i've contacted several people on the ground some journalists we used to work with in syria and they've also confirmed that these happened but it's very hard to verify at this point exactly who is behind the attack and how many people happened. we seem to be hearing never-ending claims and counterclaims it keeps going around a big circle doesn't it now absolutely and it's very hard for journalists even those working on the ground to to cover this conflict because there are always contradicting each reports contradict each other i remember when i was in hama in two thousand and eleven and august when the uprising has just started. a video

appeared on you tube showing dead bodies being thrown from the city's new range and they were two descriptions for what they see to one say that these are the rabble is and the other one saying that these are policemen well people of the regime and when we came at the scene when we arrived in the city of how much i mean it was just impossible to get the information on exactly what happened despite all the diplomatic efforts it's still continuing absolutely and the war scene is that we've seen often intensification of violence i had of the international meetings on syria maybe you remember a massacre last may. that happened right on the eve of u.n. general assembly. and in that respect the syrian opposition exile has just nominated a prime minister who is expected to fill a seat prepared for him at the arab league meeting in qatar and again we see intensification of the violence in iraq what do we know about my prime minister not

actually very much. cato fifty years old he's a syrian born naturalized american has been living in taxes for decades he used to be executive and came to prominence working with the humanitarian agency during the war and of course expectations are very high that were very high that i mean these nomination to have stopped the budget in the country of. course but it reflects the let's get more now on the latest events in syria and talk to author and storage of wholeness of this north carolina general even. if it turns out the chemical weapons have been used here in syria what effect could this do you think the u.s. previously would be a red line drawn if it was proved to the government or did it what if the rebels have to have done this. well if it turns out that the rebels committed this act we should not be surprised after all they've become the master of car bombings not

least we should also recall that this is the tenth anniversary of the disastrous us invasion of iraq and as we speak bombs are going off in baghdad country waiting this disastrous invasion we should connect the two events just as the al-qaeda in iraq and their ally it or detonating bombs in baghdad across the border in syria al nusra front which is connected to al qaeda in iraq is engaged in car bombings and perhaps chemical weapons bombings as well with that question mark in mind just think from some the u.k. money again recently said they're actively looking at arming the rebels be so keen to do it now. i'm afraid so france and the u.k. or withering powers you just had a story on the european union and how it's been forced into trying to compensate bank deposits in cyprus this is a direct of the weakness of the european union as

a result of the weakness france in the u.k. or heavily dependent upon capital from the gulf arabs the saudis and the pitot reason not least and so it seems to me that when they talk about trying to arm the rebels in syria they're basically dancing to the tune played by the saudis and the qataris well when it comes to dialogue between the opposition and the government it doesn't seem that that's on the mind of ghassan hitto of the month elected to add the syrian opposition he said point blank you want to go see it with president assad what's that going to mean the future of the peace in syria do you think. well it's not a positive sign that is to say about seventy thousand people have perished in the wake of this uprising in syria we should not also be surprised by the fact that this so-called new prime minister in syria has been living in the state of texas in the united states of america for years the united states obviously has

a plan of doing in syria what they tried to do in iraq that is to say oust the leadership and then take over the riches and wealth oh that particular country through privatization and all the rest i really think that so because here certainly it's on the cards i mean one does not have to be a close to the street to recognize that this is been the modus vivendi for their own states for decades in the past and certainly that's what they have planned for syria thanks hits i'm a story general hold live from north carolina they give initial thoughts tonight on it. journalist no club has written extensively about syria spoke to us too he says it's no accident he'd have spent a large part of his life in the us before big voted in his opposition prime minister let's take a listen. the americans want to make sure that when president assad falls they got their man in damascus and they cherry picked him you know he voted by thirty five people and it's quite ludicrous to argue this guy has the right to rule syria where it's present sabur that we support him or not does have sizable support in the

country which is why still in power and so i think the answer your question the u.s. wants this man as an ideal sort of leader opposed to sack to take power and obviously to do the things expected of him which would be to open up this unit colony to u.s. multinationals productize economy and of course too great with hezbollah to break with iran would be lunacy and madness for corporate assad's forces to use chemical weapons and so if you know we find that chemical weapons has been used it has to be by the rebels anything that's the case then obviously that will highlight the hypocrisy of the u.s. and the west because they said that it be a red line of chemical weapons are used that only seems to apply if president assad's forces use them the syrian army and so we're going to be consistent on these chemical weapons to use and it's wrong and the rebels are using and they should be indicted for war crimes journalist neil clark one used to come up after this quick break on r.t. international. mirror image of iraq after

a. twenty day taxi trip through the country. the road all the. evidence from north to south. the route of iraqi tragedy. after the war waiting for peace. like the taxi on our t.v. . speak your language. programs and documentaries in arabic it's all here on all t.v. reporting from the world talks about six of the ip interviews intriguing story to tell you. the arabic to find out more visit or a big t.v. show it's called.

again twenty three fourteen moscow time under strike at guantanamo bay continues to gain momentum it has drawn some cautious concern from the u.n. in fishel statement it's even right spot he said it's investigating allegations of mistreatment of america's detention facility in cuba but forty two days on his new day to need detainees joined the protest u.s. officials maintain inmates have never been mistreated ati's report not as the latest. that statement said that quote while aware of some of the allegations of mistreatment of inmates said to have been provoked to provoke the hunger strike which includes undue interference with inmates personal effects we are still trying to confirm the details unquote that was

a statement coming from the un's office of of commissioner for human rights now the statement went on to say that the human rights commissioner. has repeatedly regretted that the u.s. government has not closed get mail and has she's also expressed concern over the obstacles the national defense authorization act has created for losing the island prison and for trying prisoners that are there even the united nations has not been able to have enough access at guantanamo to see in depth what is taking place with this hunger strike that prisoners at guantanamo bay one on hunger strike hunger strike on february sixth in protest of the alleged confiscation of their personal items and. sacrilegious handling of their qur'an at that time the u.s. military was saying that only a handful of prisoners were on hunger strike then by friday we received a statement from navy captain robert duran she was the spokesman for the detention

center and he said at that point fourteen prisoners were on hunger strike as of today the u.s. military is now saying twenty one detainees at guantanamo bay are on hunger strike but durandal maintains that claims of a mouse hunger strike have been blown out of proportion that it's not an estimated one thirty as the attorneys for the detainees say it is but we do know that medical experts have told us and so have attorneys that once this hunger strike enters its forty fifty day hunger strike participants risk losing their eyesight and losing their hearing there's been reports according to attorneys of hunger strike. participants losing up to thirty pounds if not more coughing up blood losing consciousness being hospitalized according to the u.s. military the spokesperson for guantanamo bay as of last week there were five inmates that were being force fed force fed but the problem is we as journalists do not have direct access to more autonomy obey the information we get of what is

taking place there with the in with the inmates is censored by the military so right now we are basing our information on what the attorneys are telling us of the detainees and this hunger strike but it can get to the point of those detainees being force fed an attorney who's represented several guantanamo bay prisoners says many of them remain behind bars even though they were cleared long ago. there one hundred sixty six people at guantanamo of those there are probably at most twenty guys who are bad guys who were taken in later guys like khalid shaikh muhammad the other people are and most nothing more than half of them eighty six of them have been cleared at least for three years and some during the bush administration cleared as innocent people and they're still there and they're frustrated i mean i don't care if you're held in the dorchester hotel in london or the best hotel the ritz carlton in moscow and you're confined to that room for eleven years and you

can't see your family you can't go out and talk to people you can't read freely you can't get about i don't care that allows you condition even if you're fed the best food every day and believe me they're not i mean they are imprisoned improperly without a chance to get out that's the worst condition. on the big stories now today at least fifty six people have been killed over two hundred wounded in a series of bombings across baghdad as attacks struck mostly shiite neighborhoods in the city officials say there but at least ten separate incidents including suicide car and roadside explosions in busy areas all within one hour of the deadliest attacks struck near the heavily fortified green seat of many government buildings and embassies no one's officially claimed responsibility but sunni militants have been stepping up their attacks in the country aiming to destabilize the government. ten years now since a coalition led by the u.s. and britain invaded the country with the quote freedom and democracy mission that's

trying to gauge where iraq is a decade after the intervention michael o'brien he's also of the book america's failure in iraq he's on the line from washington d.c. michael good evening the u.s. invasion heralded didn't it the goal of setting people free from a dictator saddam hussein's goal of the people to free from his repressions that was at least a success when it. well it certainly that in itself was a success there's no question about it but what was the price that was paid for to achieve that success. as i you know i spent fourteen months over there in baghdad and also traveling around the country and the iraqis i worked with i was an advisor to the ministry of defense which was being newly recreated after paul bremer disbanded it and which is a big big issue. and the insurgency of course that followed the invasion and the iraqis i work with would say to me they did they'd say mr mike that's you know

everybody's called mr and then their first name oh you know we understand that mr bush wants to fight the war on terrorism but why did he have to pick iraq to do it and that they really did say that to me that's not making that up and when they would ask me that question i honestly i didn't know what to say to him i didn't really have an answer it was a very legitimate question and then of course you know after go ahead please now that the u.s. troops are out of iraq i just want to ask you about how civilians have been treated there increasingly full of victims of terror attacks the question is should those troops a stayed great hindsight question but do you think they should have stayed on alt. well see. we had no plan after after action plan after the invasion. you know people have written about it i wrote of the only person you always know that people would plan. and there was no plan for after the invasion we would the invasion and it did but nothing before afterwards so not only in answer to your

question not only was there no plan for after the invasion like maybe an occupation for a few years or this or that but then paul bremer disbanded iraq's own security minister the minister of ministries the or the iraqi military and the iraqi national police which is like an interior army so with no plan for air for the invasion for the u.s. forces and coalition forces on top of that added to the fact that paul bremer disbanded iraqis own infrastructure for security it was and it is not at all coincidental that the insurgency picked up around two thousand and five two thousand and six so we really we are very very much responsible for creating the creating the insurgency that followed a war that was dubious in the first place. you know why did we go in there the weapons of mass destruction excuse so why did we reason we want to go when they

hear of the preemptive attack well ok you know there's talk now that dick cheney wanted us to go there because we needed their oil well you know it's their oil it's not ours and we have well here but the environmentalists won't let a stroll for it so if we go into iraq for oil we and that means we invaded a country for to get their oil is that what really are and it's not i mean. what really happened well tell you one thing that really did happen in you this is that you can't dispute it we invaded a country that was no threat to the united states or any threat to its neighbor it was a threat to kuwait twelve years earlier but in two thousand and three it was not we went in there because president bush was convinced by his close advisors that it was the right thing to do because saddam had weapons of mass destruction which

needless to say he did not so we invaded a country illegally without any cause for doing it you know george tenet said it was a slam dunk that saddam had weapons of mass destruction that was a pipe dream that didn't that wasn't true and then we went in there we didn't go in with enough troops to do the job right and then paul bremmer disbanded there are security forces so we were completely on our own and then the insurgency happened and the this surge that happened in two thousand and seven was finally president bush finally decided i've got to do something to hemorrhage the bleeding that's going on in iraq michael we got to leave it there but thank you for explaining what you think about the story tonight michael o'brien author of the book america's failure in iraq much appreciated when we time out u.s. taxpayers are probably asking how much more that have to spend on iraq home top of what's already been pulled in the figure of eight hundred billion dollars continues

to rise with cost lending every second from did it with her to the personnel to the broader social and economic impact of the war michael are going to say no it takes a closer look than of the numbers. the decade long war in iraq may be officially over but american taxpayers are still paying for the cost of the invasion let's talk numbers the u.s. has spent more than sixty billion dollars in reconstruction in iraq so far that works out to about fifteen million dollars per day overall cost and other aid adds up to seven hundred and sixty seven billion dollars since the american led invasion and that's according to the congressional budget office but national priorities project a u.s. research group they estimate the real cost at over eight hundred billion dollars and they add that some funds are still being spent on ongoing projects and that number continues to rise every second now a major problem it seems is that all this cash the u.s.

is coughing up isn't falling into the right hands or projects iraqi prime minister nuri al maliki says funding could have brought a great change in iraq but there was misspending of money i want to give you some examples of this mis spending if you can call it that there are too many to name but here are some that i think really stand out in iraq's diyala province the u.s. began building a prison in two thousand and four but abandon the project after three years to flee a surge in violence now have complete facility cost american taxpayers forty million dollars but since in rubble and there are no plans to ever finish or use it according to the justice ministry also sub contractors overcharge the u.s. government thousands of dollars for supplies take a look at this control switch the u.s. pays nine hundred dollars for that when it's actually valued at just seven dollars eighty dollars for a section of a pipe that is actually valued at just a buck fifty and when you're talking hundreds of billions of dollars nine hundred

bucks of course sounds like small change but obviously it's adding up here's another one widespread fraud led by a former u.s. army officer cost cans of millions of dollars in kickbacks. nectar to government contracts for bottled water twenty two people were criminally convicted with still tens of millions of dollars in contracts for bottled water but for iraqis they're paying a different cost a government rife with corruption and in finding near daily deadly bombings still blast baghdad streets and a quarter of the country's thirty one million lives in poverty. about what you just have for you between now and then my skies and stacy head a bit exposed the a too big to joe finance is a case in ati's cuz a report. there

was a time in america when buses were officially segregated and today if they tried to resegregate the wall next to there would be outrage throughout the usa every t.v. channel and newspaper so segregation in america was wrong but no america funding segregation no for via foreign aid seems to be a ok and jim dandy arab language leaflets have been spread around west bank in palestinian areas asking residents to start using special bus lines place to put palestinians on separate bus lines were first announced in november of two thousand and twelve after some complaints by jewish settlers of trouble on the buses between passengers of different ethnicities in regards to the special bus lines it's really human rights group but selim said

the attempt to segregation is appalling and the current arguments about security needs an overcrowding must not be allowed to camouflage blatant racism you know when south africa had apartheid they were slammed with sanctions including from the us but if you're israel go ahead and segregate all the buses you like and you'll still be the u.s.'s top recipient of foreign aid at three point one billion dollars a year if there's one thing i don't like it's hypocrisy like this but that's just my opinion. choose your language. clearly we can't with oh if you're going to. choose to use the consensus. choose to use the great. choose the stories get him to. choose to accept.

i am max kaiser welcome to the kaiser report happy birthday jamie diamond on the very day so branding your birth scientists coded the d.n.a. of the tape worm stacy ever tell us more yes max kaiser indeed max it was jamie diamond birthday a few days ago and new york times deal breaker celebrated with a happy birthday jamie diamond and they talked about his birthday from march thirteenth two thousand and eight when she was eating dinner at a greek restaurant and received a call from gary parr allez art and to ask him to rescue bear stearns but on the same day this.